Oven Roasted Tomatoes

Every year I ask my husband to ease up on the number of tomato plants he grows in the garden. To his credit, this year he did cut back. We started out with ten Early Girl and two Cherry tomato plants. We even lost three plants a few weeks ago when rain and wind knocked them down. Even so, I’m still looking at a butt ton of tomatoes to process.

When I am faced with a first world problem, such as this one, I get busy. I oven roast the tomatoes, and I’m going to tell you how to do it, too.

I wash the tomatoes, and I pull any stems off. Then I dice them into 1/2 inch pieces.

Once that’s done, I line a 13 by 9 inch cookie sheet with aluminum foil, with enough extra length to make a packet around the tomatoes. I sprinkle some olive oil on the foil, and then add one layer of the diced tomatoes. I sprinkle a teaspoon each of dried basil and dried oregano over the tomatoes. Then I fold the long sides of the foil toward the middle of the pan and then the ends toward the middle, so that it looks sort of like an envelope.

After all of that, I roast the tomatoes in a 350-degree Fahrenheit oven for about half an hour. I check to see if they’re done by pulling them out of the oven and looking to see if the skins are a little wrinkly. The aroma should be like a pasta sauce.

Once I know they’re done, I let the tomatoes cool, and then I freeze them in freezer bags. These diced oven roasted tomatoes are perfect to throw into homemade spaghetti sauce, or soups.

If you don’t have a garden, tomatoes are available at grocery stores and farmer’s markets right now for reasonable prices. I challenge you to try this and let me know how it works for you!